Sitting in her office overlooking the Navesink River, Beth Stavola laughs now as she tells the story of a night she spent in Arizona when she first got into the medical marijuana industry.
“I have this vivid recollection of lying in this Holiday Inn-type hotel, staring at the ceiling, asking myself, ‘What are you doing on the border of Mexico, waiting for your approval to operate from the Department of Health?’ ” she recalls.
She had found a place for a dispensary in Douglas, Arizona. Her husband was back home in New Jersey recovering from surgery.
“So I was by myself and the only place I could find that zoned out properly was across from the Border Patrol station where they trained their horses. [Cannabis] is federally illegal, I’m across from the Border Patrol training station across the border from where El Chapo used to have his tunnels.
“What could go wrong?”
Apparently, not much.
Six years later, Stavola, who will be a panelist at NJ Cannabis Media’s inaugural NJ Cannabis Summit, is applying for one of six Alternative Treatment Center permits the New Jersey Department of Health will issue later this year. She’s chief operating officer of MPX Bioceutical Corporation, a public company with dispensaries and production facilities in four states.